$1 Lunch Day at Groupon

Groupon.com sent out an email saying that this friday they will be offering thousands of lunch deals for $1. They will be partnering with Feeding America to provide half-a-million meals to families during the holiday season.

It sounds like a great idea, a way to help out families and also to get a meal on the cheap. But I was very disappointed to see how few options they had. In the New York city area alone, there were only 2 offers and they were already sold out by 8:30am. In Boston there was one lone restaurant and that was 14 miles south of the city. After checking over 25 cities around the United States, I only saw another offer in Austin, Texas and that was also sold out. There was nothing in places like Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, DC, etc.

Maybe this is only the beginning of the program and they will be able to raise money for Feeding America but from "thousands of lunch deals for $1" to only 4? It seems that they are running this promotion like they ran their IPO with lots of false starts. Hopefully they can get their act together.

* Spoke a little bit too soon. Around 10am they loaded up some more offers but still far from the thousands they said in their email. Noticing around a dozen offers for cities that have any offers posted and they are going fast. At least this is all for a good cause as Groupon is giving a portion of the proceeds to Feeding America.